Does Bing Actually Have a Chance?

The Microsoft search engine Bing is now 5 weeks old and already has recorded over two million unique browsers. Yes, it is nowhere near Google or Yahoo but is definitely worth considering how our websites are appearing on Microsoft’s new site.

New figures show Bing has recorded 2.35 million unique browsers in Australia since its launch. Google recorded 9.52 million unique browsers, up from 9.1 million in May and 8.9, million in April. Yahoo7! Recorded 3.37 million unique browsers in June up from 3.23 million in May and 3.13 million in April.

Bing’s market share may be set to increase with Microsoft’s $80 million spend in marketing. Maybe Microsoft is right, is print advertising in magazines enough to build the idea that people need a decision engine- and that Bing is the solution they are after? Researchers believe either way it will be difficult for Bing to compete with Google, which currently accounts for 90% of Australian searches.

Just because there is a new product whether washing powder or bottled water and whoever calls them “new and improved” doesn’t mean consumers will abandon the brand that they already use and like. Bing faces this exact challenge when taking on Google. Google’s not broken, people like it, and there is no compelling reason for them to switch to Bing. Search is about comprehensiveness, freshness, scale and size it’s difficult for Bing to copy and emulate this. I feel searches are definitely not going to move to a different search engine just because it’s new, especially if it has inferior search algorithms and accuracy.

In summary, I don’t think we should be devoting out entire marketing budget to Bing just yet due to its small amount of visits and less accuracy than Google but it is well worth keeping your eye on it.

1 Comment

Sure, I think Bing has a chance. I think a lot of sites have a chance over time, however. Being realistic about all of this, you have to figure no one is going to bring down Google in a short amount of time. It might take years in fact, due to the massive lead it holds. Plus, I don’t think you can honestly look at an alternative search and say “this one works better” than Google at this point.
I think there are a lot of alternatives out there that work just as well but that won’t sway users away from Google, although it might grip the attention of new users. That’s probably the biggest plus of Microsoft’s campaign, that it probably should grab most of the new search users in the next year or so.
I think anyone interested in the search industry should also try http://www.eZanga.com and see how it works for you. It’s a meta search engine and I think it’s a pretty fair alternative to the big searches out there.